As for Marsac, he stepped close up to him.
"What is this?" he cried harshly. "What is this make-believe
feebleness? That you are pale, poltroon, I do not wonder! But why
these tottering limbs? Why this assumption of weakness? Do you
look to trick me by these signs?"
"Have you taken leave of your senses?" exclaimed the other, a note
of responsive anger sounding in his voice. "Have you gone mad,
Stanislas?"
"Abandon this pretence," was the contemptuous answer. "Two days
ago at Lavedan, my friend, they informed me how complete was your
recovery; from what they told us, it was easy to guess why you
tarried there and left us without news of you. That was my
reason, as you may have surmised, for writing to you. My sister
has mourned you for dead - was mourning you for dead whilst you
sat at the feet of your Roxalanne and made love to her among the
roses of Lavedan."
"Lavedan?" echoed the other slowly. Then, raising his voice, "what
the devil are you saying?" he blazed. "What do I know of Lavedan?"
In a flash it had come to me who that enfeebled gentleman was.
Rodenard, the blunderer, had been at fault when he had said that
Lesperon had expired. Clearly he could have no more than swooned;
for here, in the flesh, was Lesperon himself, the man I had left
for dead in that barn by Mirepoix.
How or where he had recovered were things that at the moment did
not exercise my mind - nor have I since been at any pains to
unravel the mystery of it; but there he was, and for the moment
that fact was all-sufficing.
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